Page 18 of Rough Return

They shared a quiet chuckle, and Fiona whistled a happy little tune as she flipped her sunglasses down and walked outside.

* * *

Grier stared at Sage. What the fuck had Fiona told everyone? “What?”

“Happens to all of us, Grier.” Sage tossed him a little bottle of pills. “Look, no shame in getting a little help with your game. Take one, wait twenty minutes, then…” He shrugged. “By morning, she’ll be making you breakfast in bed.”

Private matters weren’t meant to be discussed out here, around a roaring fire in the clubhouse parking lot. And no mistaking, his dick was a private matter. But Frank came around behind him. “Happened to me last week. Had that new Hell Kat, Bridget, on her knees, ready, and all of a sudden, my sword isn’t made of steel anymore.”

Sword?

Frank continued undaunted by the chortles of laughter. “Yeah, well, next night I ruined her for all you morons.”

Grier didn’t need to hear this shit. He needed to grab Fiona, throw her onto the bed and show her his equipment had been at permanent attention since the very moment she turned up on the island to bring him home. And then she’d damned well know that wasn’t the problem.

Hell, he hadn’t seen her in a week almost, and just the thought of her had the tip of his dick wet and threatening a peep show out the waistband of his jeans.

Thank God for the ringing phone so he didn’t have to try to come up with some excuse for whatever tale Fiona had decided to tell. “Hello?”

She sniffed, and he heard the tears before she ever spoke. “Can you come to me?”

He would have thought it a trick had she not sounded so sad, so devastated. “Is it Max?”

“Yes. The nurse… called.” Her voice broke, and a sob rang down the line to settle in his heart. “Please, Grier.”

He was already on his borrowed bike, helmet on. “I’m on my way.” He slid the phone into his jacket and rode like the wind to her place. She was outside and climbed on behind him almost before he rolled to a stop. Not the right time to think about her arms around him or her perfume on the air, the way she held on as if she could drain his power with her touch, but he did focus on those things. When he should have been comforting her, helping her through the next and most difficult part of her life, all he could think of was crushing her mouth with his, drinking her in, and touching her in places he’d dreamed of every night since the wedding.

Driving kept him sane, kept his hands busy and his eyes on the road. He stopped at the light on Sprig and laid his hand over hers where they clasped around his waist as he checked for traffic. He’d run a thousand lights in his life, never cared before, but he’d never had Fiona on his bike when he did. He waited for a truck then zoomed through.

A few more blocks and he turned into her father’s drive. She kept the helmet on as she climbed off the bike and ran up the stairs to burst through the door. He found her standing by her father’s bed, face stoic, eyes dry as she held his hand. Max didn’t move, hardly breathed, probably had no idea his daughter had arrived.

Grier steadied her with a hand on each of her shoulders as she watched her father. Not that she needed steadying. She didn’t sway or even let him know she knew he was there. Unless leaning her head back against his chest counted, but he couldn’t be sure she meant to. Still, he didn’t step back. Instead, he worked to fight enjoying the feel of her against him.

Max’s chest rumbled then rattled on a last shaky breath, and he drifted away, not in the blaze of glory he’d always said he dreamed of, but quietly. No hail of gunfire or accident on his bike. Just as an old man in his bed, with his daughter at his side and a nurse monitoring his heartbeat. The machines went silent, not at all like he’d seen on TV when a heart flatlined, but in a stillness as loud as any sound he’d ever heard.

Fiona brought his knuckles to her lips, kissed them then laid his hand across his stomach, hers lingering as if she could capture the essence of him with her touch. “Bye, Daddy.”

Her knees bent, and Grier held her up until she turned into him. She didn’t sob, or scream, or even breathe hard. Gentle tears rolled down her cheek and soaked the front of his shirt as she clung to him.

He ran his hand over her back in small circles, hoping it was comfort enough because he damned sure didn’t know a single word to say. He would deal with his own grief later, with mourning the man who’d taken him in and showed him how a real man walked and talked, how he should treat a woman he loved and how he should put family, although Max had meant the club, above all else.

The nurse made the calls to the funeral home where Max’s body would be prepared and to report the death, but Grier would have to call the club. Not until Fiona had herself under control, though. Until then, he would hold her, comfort her in the only way he knew how.

“We should go,” she finally whispered.

“Do you want to take one of the cars?”

She shook her head. “No. The bike.” With her eyes closed, she added, “Please.”

Almost every day, he would deny her nothing in his power except the one thing she seemed to want most. Today, he would deny her nothing.

Fiona didn’t want to need him. Or want him. She did. But need him… one night only. She would lean on him tonight and never again. She rested her cheek against his back as he breezed them down the side roads between her father’s house and her own.

She had a pain, one so stark, so shrill, she didn’t have the defenses to fight it. Since she was a little girl, Max had been her world. She talked to him every day whether they were angry at one another or not. He’d seen her through broken hearts, a missing mother, when her best friend, Sherry Cahill, decided to be best friends with Melanie Keen instead of Fiona, through her first time shaving her legs, driving lessons, graduations… and he’d only been gone an hour and already she missed him with an ache so powerful, she lost her grip. One hand fell away and Grier pulled it around him.

Awareness of every cell in her body, because she could feel pain in all of them, rang through her. He’d told her once she’d know a pain that would make her want to die. It was after a fight they’d had because a boy, Grier, though she hadn’t told her father, had broken her heart. He’d tried to empathize, told her how he felt when her mother ran away, but she’d been so devastated, so diminished. The only way she felt whole was to fight. To let her anger light her way. But Max had…

She sobbed. Her nose ran. Her eyes swelled. And still, damned if she could stop. Max had never been just a dad or a father. He’d been a daddy. All her life. Even when she’d called him anything else.